


Neither Birthday Gifts nor Barter

by dith



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-28
Updated: 2012-05-28
Packaged: 2017-11-06 05:08:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/415048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dith/pseuds/dith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce wants to do something for Tony, who doesn't need anything, and who keeps doing things for him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neither Birthday Gifts nor Barter

Slumber parties were for kids.

In fact the Avengers were some of the most homeless people Bruce had ever met, and Bruce had met a lot of homeless people.

In the sense of having a house to call one's own, only Tony qualified among them as being homeful, and Bruce wasn't sure it counted. Tony always looked self-contained, but to Bruce he never really looked like he was at home.

Maybe that was as close as you got when you grew up as a ridiculously rich kid, thought Bruce. Maybe you learned to be comfortable wherever you were, because your houses were vast and full of strange people anyway.

Nonetheless, the A on the New York tower created a sense of shared - well, if not ownership, access. And when any of the team - in his head Bruce always put the word "team" in quotes - was in New York, they tended to drop by the tower - for recovery, if nothing else.

Bruce thought these things while studying the ceiling of his bedroom, which was on some random "private" floor of the tower. He'd woken up there after the last fight, most of which he didn't remember.

*I don't get a suit of armor. I'm exposed, like a nerve. It's a nightmare.*

Bruce knew Tony remembered those words because every time he woke up in the Tower, never really remembering how he got there, aching in every part of his body and wincing away from every part of his mind, he was in a bed with the softest, thickest silk sheets he'd ever felt in his life, with pillows and a comforter made of the same. He suspected, from the smell and the insulative properties, that the latter were all stuffed with silk as well.

He figured it was Tony's version of bandaging something raw.

The sun was coming up and Bruce looked out through the window that wasn't his and if he didn't feel at home, at least he didn't feel under attack.

###

After a day or two, when Bruce was done soaking his muscles and sleeping it off, he finally pushed himself out of bed - groaning as he did so; he wasn't a twenty year old any more - and staggered to the closet.

All the clothes inside - shirts hung in color order, pants in a variety of tasteful neutrals below - were his size.

###

Tony didn't need or want anything. Bruce hated the sensation that there was nothing he could do for Tony in return. Ever.

When he was scrabbling around in the kitchen, putting together some scrambled eggs and washing some grapes - because he needed protein and wanted a boost in his blood sugar - he suddenly stopped. Looking around the palatial oak-and-stainless castle of a kitchen, he took in the large variety of cabinets.

When the woman came in and startled him, he banged his head on the top of the cabinet he'd stuck his head into.

"Can I help you?" she asked pleasantly enough. "Maybe some ice?" and she gestured to where he was rubbing the bump on his head.

"No, I'm sorry, I shouldn't be poking around, I was just - "

"Oh." Bruce saw the moment when she recognized him, saw the little recoil. It was familiar enough. "Dr. Banner. I'm sorry. Mr. Stark left instructions to bring you whatever you wanted. Was there something you wanted to eat?"

"I already - of course, you're the - the chef? The cook?"

"I'm Mrs. Pynchon, the cook," she said in the same pleasant I'm-happy-to-wait-on-you voice that went with positions in service. To give her credit, she recovered fairly quickly from her recoil. She was a very tall, broad-shouldered woman; knowing Tony, she was probably a mixed-martial artist as well as a cook.

"What I was trying to find out is, what does Tony eat? Mr. Stark - I can't quite tell from what's here what he usually eats."

"Often he doesn't, Dr. Banner," and she moved around the counter to stand on the side where Bruce was still standing, next to his carton of eggs. She leaned to finish draining the grapes he'd left in a colander in one of the sinks. He started to protest; she waved him off. "There are several deep freezers just down the hall, and I keep some things frozen that otherwise might go bad too quickly - some seafood and meat, whole grains and a selection of berries. Also some sorts of fruit that Mr. Stark likes to keep on hand for mixed drinks." 

She threw a smile over her shoulder, a long braid of dark hair bouncing across her back as she rolled the grapes out on a linen towel, deftly and quickly separating them all from their stems, and dried them. They were each one plump and perfect, dark purple dusted with silver on their skins, and looked like they had been on a French vine that morning. Bruce speculated that perhaps they had.

"When he eats, which is irregularly, Mr. Stark often likes to order in; there are a number of restaurants in the area where the chefs are familiar with his tastes. I'm here to keep the kitchen stocked, mainly," she seemed a little rueful about this, "but I also keep the associated staff fed when they are here, and refreshments for any visitors."

"So Tony - Mr. Stark eats fairly healthy food, then," said Bruce thoughtfully. "But not too regularly."

"The only thing Mr. Stark requires with any regularity is coffee," said the broad-faced woman with a slight smile. "In general he leans toward steak, lean chicken that is poached, and shellfish. He is very fond of shrimp. He has not noticed that I've replaced rice in many of his dishes with quinoa, so I suspect he does not care. He eats a great deal of green leafy vegetables - "

"Do you know why?" asked Bruce rather abruptly.

"He had a period relatively recently when he... required them, and I believe he acquired a taste for them which Ms. Potts has encouraged him to maintain. He had been drinking them in a puree at the time, which he no longer does; I believe he did not care for the texture."

"Sure." Bruce was looking thoughtfully around the room.

"So the balance of what I prepare for him is largely cruciferous vegetables - spinach, broccoli, anything nutrient-dense in that category."

"You're a nutritionist."

"I am." She opened the refrigerator, pulled out a container of clean fresh baby spinach leaves, and tore a few into a bowl, and with a few extra motions had added some grape tomatoes, dried cranberries, walnuts and goat cheese. She pushed this toward him. "To go with your eggs, Dr. Banner."

He nodded. "Nice choice, Mrs. Pynchon."

###

"Ms. Potts - "

"Pepper, please, Bruce, don't you feel at home here yet?" She smiled at him as he came into her office. "We have six more pairs of glasses in your prescription stored in your room, by the way, if you need them."

"My room." He cleared his throat. Of course it was his room; all the clothes in it were his size. It still sounded odd. "That's very thoughtful, thank you. I apologize for interrupting, I just wanted to ask you a question."

"Shoot." She angled her body, still seated, toward him, and gave him her full undivided attention.

He hugged himself, looked down to the side. Pepper Potts' undivided attention was... undivided. Bruce still felt uncomfortable when people looked straight at him.

"I wanted to buy some things, but I don't have access to the cash I left hidden under my mattress in India - assuming it's still there - and I wondered - "

"Anything you want, Bruce," said Pepper. "You should feel free. SHIELD has assigned you a spending account, in lieu of a paycheck, on which you'd have to pay income taxes, you know. They thought it was simpler than making you pick a country."

"Oh, I - I didn't know, that's. Hm. Okay, good. I wanted to pick up some things for Tony."

"For Tony?" She raised one perfectly groomed strawberry eyebrow.

"He's been - " Bruce waved his hands, rubbed one ear as if it itched, looked down again. "Very thoughtful."

"For Tony?" she said again. She turned to her laptop, tapped a few keys. "I'm emailing you a purchasing account you can use for anything you like. Well, up to, perhaps, a jet. Not that he wouldn't love a jet. But really, he has enough of them already."

"No no, just a few little things - ingredients, really."

"Ingredients?" Now both of Pepper's eyebrows went up. "I'll look forward to seeing those."

###

Bruce held the small jar in his hand, shook some of the powdered ingredients out. He, Pepper, and Mrs. Pynchon regarded them dubiously.

"I haven't even heard of some of these things," said Mrs. Pynchon, "and I do keep up with the literature."

"I don't think you'd know about some of these things without spending time rather far up in the Andes Mountains," said Bruce, dipping his head. "And perhaps in Vietnam. And, uh, Cameroon."

"What is it?" asked Pepper, poking it with her finger.

"It's what I guess they call superfoods in the press, mostly - antioxidants, a number of things to improve liver function, since no matter what he says he has a chunk of metal that lives in his chest and it must take its toll on his liver and kidneys, some things that I believe protect glial function in the brain -"

Both of them stared at Bruce and he stopped talking. "Sorry."

"I'm interested," said Mrs. Pynchon.

"Well, and a couple of things to boost respiratory function, given that he is essentially a plane." He jiggled the powder. "I'll show you how to make up the mix; you only pulverize enough to provide him with a tablespoon or two a day. And puree it with some sprouted, live seeds we're growing in there." He wiggled his elbow at some adjoining door.

"And you're going to get this into Tony how?" asked Pepper.

Bruce looked at the dark, multicolored powder a little dubiously. "I suppose he would notice if we mixed it into his coffee."

She raised her eyebrows at it. "Yes, he would notice. He takes his coffee seriously. Also, he's not five."

Bruce shrugged. "All right, well, we'll give it to him blended in a shot of cold full-fat coconut milk. Coconut cream, really. He could certainly use the medium-chain triglycerides."

"He certainly could," Pepper nodded. Mrs. Pynchon snorted and Pepper did a simultaneous grin-shrug-eyeroll at her behind Bruce's back that clearly conveyed *I am used to agreeing with things scientists say.*

Bruce pretended not to see. "Mrs. Pynchon knows how to make that from scratch, so we avoid any BPA from storage containers."

"I do," she nodded.

Pepper looked at the stuff in Bruce's hand. "That didn't come off some grocery shelf downtown, did it."

"Nnnoooo..." Bruce admitted.

"And you're talking about air-freighted whole coconut."

"True."

"So this isn't the greenest thing Tony's ever consumed."

"Well - "

"From a fossil fuel consumption point of view."

"No." Bruce's shoulders clenched a little, making him smaller. "I just thought it could help him feel better."

"Don't worry about it," Pepper said, patting his surprisingly muscular, hairy forearm. "I just want to know in case he asks. Don't think for a minute I don't think it's a good idea. Tony spends a lot of time thinking, but not about his health."

She smiled at Bruce reassuringly when he still looked unhappy. "Bruce. Nothing's perfect in this world."

"I'm aware," he muttered.

###

When it started getting delivered, in an ice-cold shot glass next to his morning cup of coffee, Tony *did*, of course, notice.

"What's that?" he said, pointing to it.

"For you to drink," said Pepper, keeping her attention on the portfolio of papers in her hand and not even looking where he was pointing.

"Why?"

"Good for you."

"Says who?"

"Bruce."

Tony regarded it for a second with a wary eyeball, then picked it up and downed it like a shot of tequila. "That, Ms. Potts, is extremely nasty."

"I'll add some cocoa next time, Mr. Stark," she said, ignoring the accusatory finger he had pointed at the glass and handing him part of the folder she was looking at.

Tony picked up his coffee, stared closely at it for a moment in case it too sprouted something odd, then sipped it. He looked visibly relieved that it was just his usual coffee.

After that the shot glass was delivered daily with his first cup of coffee, whether that happened at eight a.m. or ten p.m., and he downed it without comment and after a while, without even making a face.

###

Bruce woke up again in the bedroom that was, apparently, his.

He remembered some of the battle from the day before. Where had that been, Kansas? He didn't know what the space spider-squids had been after, but he remembered it would have been bad to let them get it.

He remembered a bullet grazing his head, and a space spider-squid smashing up a school bus. He didn't remember much after that.

When he went to get up he found that his usual aches and pains had gone from inconveniencing to excruciating all up and down his left side.

He fell back on the bed with a moan he couldn't suppress.

"Oh good, you're awake," said Tony from the doorway, following in a robotic something-or-other - was than an intelligent desk? - that flipped itself over Bruce's supine figure and popped out a handful of screens, full of data.

"Why do I hurt so much?"

"There was a type of radiation emitted by their weapons - "

"The space squid-spiders?"

"The squid-spiders, indeed, that seemed to really make the other guy uncomfortable. I would go so far as to speculate that there may have been some actual tissue damage. I thought you would be interested so I brought you all the scans."

Bruce regarded the screens full of data - data about the other guy, which Tony must have captured during the battle itself, and about himself, which Tony must have gotten while he was transporting Bruce here. Home. Ish.

"Thanks," he said.

"Thank you. I understand I owe you a thank you - Pepper said I did - for that revolting stuff I've been snorting every morning -"

"I hope you're drinking it, not snorting it."

"- which seems to have gone a long way towards improving my concentration, my ability to sleep, and several internal organs, including apparently my stomach lining. Which had been in tatters. Who knew."

"It wouldn't have been hard to guess for anyone who's seen you work," said Bruce quietly into the screens. Then he smiled just a little with the mundanity of middle-age even in his body as he noticed his inability to bring the screens into sharp focus. "I'll have to get my glasses."

"Dummy. Glasses."

The robot whirred out of nowhere, opened a drawer across the room, and brought Bruce a pair of glasses. Bruce put them on. Dummy lightly pressed against the bridge of the glasses, fitting them to Bruce's face.

Bruce looked as dumbfounded as if someone had tucked him in.

Tony just turned to go.

"You don't -"

Tony stopped, turned back.

Bruce cleared his throat. "You don't have to be so nice to me, you know. Always bringing me home, putting me up."

"I know." Tony moved to leave again.

"Tony."

When Tony looked back, he only turned his body sideways, cocking his head, the work of a second, a man in mid-flight.

Bruce's throat worked as he swallowed. "I can't even promise I won't kill you tomorrow."

"Nobody can," said Tony, tilting his head away from Bruce, and then he walked out.


End file.
